The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) entry for “well-being” identifies ways in which terms related to happiness differ. According to the SEP, the terms “happy”, “wellness”, “satisfaction”, “pleasure” or “well-being” can refer to a series of possible states:

reflection on past events
moment-to-moment evaluations of happiness
by oneself, or with another person
inferred from neuroimaging
inferred from sensory input (pain, pleasure)
inferred from cognitive structure (dysfunctional thinking, delusion)
inferred from virtue (is prayer inherently instrumental to well-being?)
duration of the experience
effect on other factors (e.g., personal agency, power)
repetitiveness (is pleasure derived from addiction incompatible with happiness?)
objectivity (is “healthy eating” or “sex” always pleasurable?)
whether the experience is altruistic or egoistic,
whether happiness reflects an emotional state (affect-based account)
whether happiness reflects a cognitive judgement (life satisfaction account)
The affective and life-satisfaction views of happiness differ meaningfully when it comes to certain topics such as the relationship between income and happiness:

“Surveying large numbers of Americans in one case, and what is claimed to be the first globally representative sample of humanity in the other, these studies found that income does indeed correlate substantially (.44 in the global sample), at all levels, with life satisfaction—strictly speaking, a “life evaluation” measure that asks respondents to rate their lives without saying whether they are satisfied. Yet the correlation of household income with the affect measures is far weaker: globally, .17 for positive affect, –.09 for negative affect; and in the United States, essentially zero above $75,000 (though quite strong at low income levels). If the results hold up, the upshot appears to be that income is pretty strongly related to life satisfaction, but weakly related to emotional well-being, at least above a certain threshold.”

There are weaknesses to the self-report method of elicitation for happiness: The lay conception of emotions (affect) is that they are discrete. It is typical, in everyday language, just as in research, to use research protocols that accept answers such as: “I am happy or I am sad, but not both simultaneously”, or “I am 7 on a 1-10 scale of happiness (likert)”.

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